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Have you guys all forgotten what the pre-iPhone days of mobile carriers were like, in particular in USA? ATT (the old one on TDMA), Sprint and Verizon used nearly-proprietary hardware. (And remember Nextel, which literally used an entire proprietary mobile network standard?) Cingular and T-Mo were already GSM but locked down everything. Every carrier loaded custom firmware onto their devices to plaster their proprietary BS apps everywhere, defacing even excellent hardware. (I had an otherwise lovely Sony-Ericsson phone that Cingular had stolen two useful buttons from, hard-mapping them to useless carrier apps instead of the useful functions those buttons normally had.)
Then Apple came along and convinced Cingular to agree to have zero control over the handset software and apps. I cannot overstate enough how much of a game changer this was. And then all the other carriers had to agree to the same thing because they wanted to sell the iPhone, too. The entire smartphone industry benefited immensely from Apple dedtroying the carriers’ stronghold on handset software. Apple is the company that turned the carriers into the “dumb pipes” they should be.
Our recollection is not the same, perhaps because regional/national differences.
I don't recall Apple being influential to the phone market at all in the early days.
At the time Cingular was Cingular (early 2000, Cingular not yet acquired by AT&T), I needed both T-Mobile and Cingular as my regular carrier. I had coverage with T-Mobile at home (and no Cingular), and Cingular at work (but no T-Mobile). I had T-Mobile cheap flip phone that was unlocked and can use Cingular and other alien SIMs. It was also very simple to get Cingular phones unlocked to use T-Mobile and other alien SIM also. So those phones were entirely carrier independent, I used them in the USA, Europe, and Asia. The carrier has nothing to say about it and they had no control over it. For a carrier branded phone, they can refuse to give you the unlock code, but you can always get a phone (like the Moto Razr) that is factory unlocked.
Then in 2004, I switch over to Treo 650. I have factory-unlocked ones that swap SIMs (T-Mobile, Cingular, other alien SIMs) without distinction. It just works. I have unlocked Cingular-branded Treo 650 and they can use alien SIM without distinction. I later "debranded" the Cingular Treo 650 to run pure Treo 650 firmware also without problem. The only Cingular thing about them (after debranding) was just the different color scheme the phone have (Cingular ones are lighter grey and a Cingular label metallic color frame around the TFT screen). Again, entirely carrier independent. I even have an after market dual-SIM kit that allowed you to cut your two SIMs and fit it into the same SIM tray - but both SIMs are not active at the same time, you select which SIM to use with a Treo 650 App that came with the kit.
That was way before Apple even got into the phone market.
Apple iPhone 1 was introduced in 2007.
I was addicted to debranding. I was still using my Treo as my main phone, but I have my two Zenfone 2e (AT&T only) phones unlocked (not factory unlocked, but with unlock code) and debranded so they run ASUS software with nothing AT&T there. They are like Asus Zenfone 2 (ZE500CL) but with less memory. I ended up sticking with my Treo650 until carriers moved to sunset 2G/2.5G phones to 3G only.
So, carrier has no control with factory unlocked phones prior to Apple even got into the market. They had no influence I can recall on how AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular behaved back in 2000 to 2007 (prior to iPhone1) and yet unbranded phones are aplenty. Unlocking is common, and debranding was a thing to do.
EDIT: Quote mark boundaries wrong, edited to show where quote started and ended